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Thursday, November 30, 2017

Time will tell, but Saudi Arabia’s gamble to pressure
Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed, Lebanese Shiite militia, by forcing Saad Hariri,
the country’s prime minister, to resign, may be paying off despite widespread
perceptions that the manoeuvre backfired.

Broad international support for Mr. Hariri following his
announcement from Riyadh in a speech in which he denounced Hezbollah as an
Iranian proxy that was wreaking havoc in the Middle East and the prime
minister’s decision to put his resignation on hold once he returned to Beirut
to a rock star’s welcome reinforced the belief that Saudi Arabia had overplayed
his hand.

Mr. Hariri’s decision has, however, opened the door to
backroom negotiations in which Hezbollah, a major Lebanese political force, is
finding that it may have to compromise to avoid a political breakdown in
Lebanon and secure achievement of its most immediate goals.

Mr. Hariri is believed to be demanding that Hezbollah halt
its support to Houthi rebels in Yemen and withdraw from Syria where its
fighters supported the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in line with
Lebanese government policy not to become involved in conflicts raging elsewhere
in the region.

Hezbollah signalled a willingness to compromise by urging
Mr. Hariri to withdraw his resignation, calling for calm, advising its
supporters not to take to the streets, and announcing that it was withdrawing
some of its units from Syria and Iraq, where they supported Shiite militias in
their fight against the Islamic State.

Mr. Hariri, who signalled this week that he may withdraw his
resignation, put it earlier on hold at the request of Lebanese President of
Michel Aoun, a Christian ally of Hezbollah, who allowed the militia in recent
years to outmanoeuvre the prime minister. At the same time, Hezbollah charged
that Mr. Hariri had not announced his resignation of his own free will but had
been forced to do so by Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Hariri, who blames Hezbollah for the 2005 assassination
of Rafik Hariri, his father and prime minister at the time of his death, agreed
to Mr. Aoun’s election as president and to become head of a government that was
dominated by Hezbollah in the false belief that Mr. Aoun would ensure that the
militia would not endanger Lebanon’s effort to avoid being sucked into the
civil war raging in neighbouring Syria.

Bruised by his inability to force Hezbollah’s hand, Mr.
Hariri appears to have reversed his slide in popularity with his threat to
resign and enhanced his prospects in forthcoming parliamentary elections.

Mr. Hariri’s newly found popularity and leverage, despite
Saudi Arabia’s zero-sum-game approach to its proxy wars with Iran in Lebanon
and elsewhere, may enable him to cut a deal that would allow Hezbollah to focus
on its all-important goal of securing Lebanese-Syrian relations at the expense
of the Houthis in Yemen.

To be fair, Hezbollah and Iran view the Houthis as an
opportunity to complicate life for Saudi Arabia in the kingdom’s backyard
rather than as a strategic priority. Far more crucial is ensuring that Lebanon
maintains close ties to the government of Mr. Al-Assad. Curbing the Houthis,
who recently fired a ballistic missile at the international airport of the
Saudi capital Riyadh, is at the top of the kingdom’s agenda.

Hezbollah, Syria and Iran need Lebanon to have normal, if not
close ties to an-Al Assad government once the guns fall silent given that
international and US sanctions against Syria as well as Mr, Al-Assad and his
associates are likely to remain in place. Lebanon has long been Syria’s vehicle
to circumvent the sanctions.

That becomes even more important against the backdrop of
China suggesting that it would contribute to post-war Syrian reconstruction and
could see Syria becoming an important node in its Belt and Road initiative that
intends to enmesh Eurasia in a web of infrastructure, transportation and
telecommunication links that would link Europe and much of Asia to China.

Like so often in recent years, Saudi Arabia could prove to
be its own worst enemy in its effort to curb Iranian influence and win tactical
victories in what amounts to a dangerous regional chess games in which Saudi
players have not always thought their moves through.

A wild card in Mr. Hariri’s efforts to cut a deal that would
weaken Iranian influence in Yemen and force Hezbollah to act more as a Lebanese
rather than a regional player while at the same time allowing it to protect
Syrian interests is staunchly anti-Iranian Gulf affairs minister Thamer
al-Sabhan, a major influence on Crown Prince Mohammed’s regional strategy.

A former military attaché in Lebanon and the kingdom’s first
ambassador to Iraq since the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Iraq, who was asked by the
Iraqi government to leave after only nine months in Baghdad, Mr. Al-Sabhan has
successfully advised Prince Mohammed to adopt an uncompromising approach
towards Hezbollah.

US officials, according to Associated Press, accused Mr.
Al-Sabhan when he visited Washington earlier this month of undermining US
policy in Lebanon that involves strengthening the Lebanese armed forces to
enable it to match Hezbollah’s military power and supporting Lebanon’s hosting
of more than a million Syrian refugees.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Mr.
Al-Sabhan’s influence by denouncing him in a recent speech as a “hairy monkey”
and “man acting like a child.”

In response, Mr. Al-Sabhan tweeted that “if an
incompetent man criticizes me, this is proof that I am a whole man.”

A deal between Mr. Hariri and Hezbollah
is unlikely to make the likes of Mr. A-Sabhan happy because it would continue
to legitimize the Iranian ally. Nonetheless, it could help the kingdom with its
ill-fated intervention in Yemen that has sparked a massive humanitarian crisis
and cost Saudi Arabia enormous reputational capital.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

By declaring the Qatar-based International Union of Islamic
Scholars (ILUM) a terrorist organization, Saudi Arabia is confronting some of
the world’s foremost Islamic political parties and religious personalities, opening
itself up to criticism for its overtures to Israel, and fuelling controversy in
countries like Malaysia and Tunisia.

In a statement
earlier this week, Saudi Arabia charged that ILUM was “using Islamic rhetoric
as a cover to facilitate terrorist activities.” The banning of ILUM goes to the
heart of the Gulf crisis that pits a UAE-Saudi-led alliance against Qatar and
is driven by United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed’s visceral
opposition to any expression of political Islam.

The UAE for several years has sought with little evident
success to counter ILUM’s influence by establishing groups like the Muslim
Council of Elders and the Global Forum for Prompting Peace in Muslim Societies
as well as the Sawab and Hedayah Centres’ anti-extremism messaging initiatives
in collaboration with the United States and the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum.

The ban appears to have been designed to position Saudi
Arabia as the arbiter of what constitutes true Islam and marks a next phase in
a four-decade long, $100 billion campaign waged by the kingdom to counter Iran
by spreading for the longest period of time Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism,
that often served as an ideological inspiration for jihadist philosophy – an iteration
ultra-conservatives have condemned.

ILUM “worked on destroying major religious institutions in
the Muslim world, like the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia and
Al-Azhar in Egypt,” one of the foremost institutions of Islamic learning, charged
Abdulrahman
al-Rashed, a prominent Saudi journalist and columnist for Al Arabiya.

Al Arabiya’s owner, Waleed bin Ibrahim al-Ibrahim, was among
the kingdom’s top media barons arrested in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman’s recent purge of members of the ruling family, senior officials, and
businessmen under the mum of anti-corruption.

“The terrorism project hiding under Islam launched its work
around the same time organizations which issue extremist fatwas (religious
legal opinions) were founded. Like al-Qaeda and ISIS (an acronym for the
Islamic State), these jurisprudential groups said they refuse to be local as
they view themselves as global organizations that cross borders. The most
dangerous aspect of terrorism is extremist ideology. We realize this well now,”
Mr Al-Rashed said.

The Council of Senior Scholars, despite having endorsed Prince
Mohammed’s reforms in a bid to salvage what it can of the power sharing agreement
that from the kingdom’s founding granted his ruling Al Saud family legitimacy,
is a body of ultra-conservative Islamic scholars.

Various statements by the council and its members critical
of aspects of Prince Mohammed’s economic and social reform since his rise in
2015 suggest that support among its scholars is not deep-seated.

Prince Mohammed recently vowed to move the kingdom away from
its embrace of ultra-conservatism and towards what he described as a more “moderate”
form of Islam.

Speaking to The
New York Times, Prince Mohammed argued that at the time of the Prophet Mohammed
there were musical theatres, an absence
of segregation of men and women, and respect for Christians and Jews, who were anointed
People of the Book in the Qur’an. “The first commercial judge in Medina was a
woman! Do you mean the Prophet was not a Muslim?” Prince Mohammed asked.

Authorities days later banned
pilgrims from taking photos and videos in Mecca’s Grand Mosque and the
Mosque of the Prophet in Medina in line with an ultra-conservative precept that
forbids human images. The ban was imposed after Israeli blogger Ben Tzion
posted a selfie in Mecca on social media. Authorities bar non-Muslims from
entering the two holy cities.

In a statement, authorities said the ban was intended to
protect and preserve Islam's holiest sites, prevent the disturbance of
worshippers, and ensure tranquillity while performing acts of worship.

Founded by controversial Egyptian-born scholar Yousef al-Qaradawi,
one of Islam’s most prominent living clerics and believed to be a spiritual
leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, ILUM members include Rachid al-Ghannouchi,
the co-founder and intellectual leader of Tunisia’s Brotherhood-inspired
Ennahada Party, and Malaysian member of parliament and Pan-Malaysian Islamic
Party (PAS) head Abdul Hadi bin Awang.

Mr. Al-Qaradawi,
a naturalized Qatari citizen who in the past justified suicide bombings in
Israel but has since
condemned them, was labelled a
terrorist by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt in June
as part of their diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar. The UAE-Saudi-led
alliance demanded that Qatar act against Mr. El-Qaradawi and scores of others
as a condition for lifting the six-month-old boycott.

The banning of ILUM has, moreover, sparked political
controversy in Malaysia. Karima
Bennoune, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for cultural rights, recently
noted a deepening involvement of Malaysia’s religious authorities in policy
decisions, developments she said were influenced by “a hegemonic version of
Islam imported from the Arabian Peninsula” that was “at odds with local forms
of practice.”

“Arab culture is spreading, and I would lay the blame
completely on Saudi Arabia,” added Marina
Mahathir, the daughter of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad

Critics
of PAS demanded that Mr. Bin Awang,
a vice-president of the group, “come clean that he does not preach hatred” in
the words of former PAS leader Mujahid Yusof Rawa, and called on the government
to ask Saudi Arabia for information to back up its charges against the union.

Mr
Bin Awang, referring to Saudi King Salman, asserted last week that he
relied on the “Qur’an (for guidance) although the ruler who is the servant of
the Two Holy Cities has forged intimate ties with Israel and the United States,
because my faith is not with the Kaaba but with Allah.” One of the most sacred
sites in Mecca, Muslims turn to the Kaaba when praying.

“Just like Qatar, PAS had tried to ingratiate itself with
Iran in an attempt to cover both bases, along with Saudi. Now the chicken has
come home to roost, and just like Qatar, global minnows like PAS find
themselves caught in the middle between the two Muslim world influencers,” said
Malaysian columnist Zurairi Ar.

Among other members of ILUM is controversial Saudi scholar Salman
al-Odah, who was among clerics, intellectuals, judges and activists arrested in
the kingdom weeks before the most recent purge.

With millions of followers on social media, Mr. Al-Odah, a
once militant scholar, turned a decade ago against jihadis like Osama bin Laden
and played a key role in the kingdom’s program to rehabilitate militants, but
retained his opposition to the monarchy.

Monday, November 27, 2017

The crisis in the Gulf that pits Qatar against a
UAE-Saudi-led alliance is Qatar’s least problem when it comes to the 2022 World
Cup.

Beyond the fact that efforts by Gulf states, first and
foremost among which the United Arab Emirates, have sought to discredit Qatar
as a host long before the UAE and Saudi Arabia in June declared their
diplomatic and economic boycott, Qatar has proven capable of addressing
potential disruptions.

The import of construction materials may have become more
expensive and they may have to travel a longer route, but that does not impair
the Gulf state’s ability to complete infrastructure on time.

In some ways, if the Gulf crisis were to last another five
years until the World Cup, attendance may prove to be a more important issue.
Not because Qatar would still be involved in a dispute with its neighbours. The
crisis has already become the new normal. Even if it were resolved today,
regional relationships will never return to the status quo ante.

The reason why attendance may be an issue is that the
demography of fans attending the World Cup in Qatar may very well be a
different one than at past tournaments. Qatar is likely to attract a far
greater number of fans from the Middle East as well as from Africa and Asia.

Governments in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain, if
they were still maintaining their travel bans, could find themselves in a
difficult position if they were depriving their nationals from attending the
first ever World Cup not only in the region, but also in an Arab country. How
those governments would handle that, would have consequences for the nature of
the boycott given that not only have they banned travel, they’ve also closed
borders and closed air and sea links.

The Asian Football Confederation’s Competition Committee recently
urged governments to exempt football teams from travel bans. The call was in
response to the travel ban Saudi Arabia announced last year following the
rupture in relations with Iran as well as the more recent bans on travel to
Qatar. The question is why that advice should not also be applicable to fans.

Equally immediate and significant is the fact that
particularly the UAE is not going to give up its covert efforts to get Qatar
deprived of the World Cup. Qatar is vulnerable in that battle, not because the
UAE is so powerful, but because of one of the two main issues that were at the
core of the controversy about its hosting rights, the integrity of Qatar’s bid.

That integrity remains in question with the legal
proceedings in New York and Zurich involving corruption in world soccer body
FIFA and potential wrongdoing in the awarding of World Cups, irrespective of
the fact that Qatar has categorically and repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. The
legal proceedings, while disturbing, are likely to drag on for a considerable
period of time and as such may not pose an immediate threat.

What is more immediate is the reputational damage Qatar has
suffered. To be sure, the Gulf crisis has enhanced Qatar’s reputation to some
degree. After all, the perceptions of the Gulf crisis are one of David vs
Goliath, Qatar as the resilient underdog defending its independence and right
as a small state to chart its own course.

Qatar deserves credit for reforms being introduced to its
controversial kafala or labour sponsorship system that are likely to become a
model for the region. In doing so, it cemented the 2022 World Cup as one of the
few mega-events with a real potential of leaving a legacy of change. Qatar
started laying the foundations for that change by early on becoming the first
and only Gulf state to engage with its critics, international human rights
groups and trade unions.

The problem is that by the time that engagement produced
real results, the reputational damage had been done. Qatar is realizing that
reputations are easy to tarnish and difficult to polish. There is little doubt
that the World Cup more recently was not the only driver in labour reform, one
critics’ major bone of contention. So was the International Labour Organization
(ILO) that was about to censor Qatar and the Gulf crisis.

There is no doubt that Qatar has learnt from mistakes it
made in the public diplomacy and public relations aspects of the labour issue.
That is evident in Qatar’s markedly different handling of the Gulf crisis. It’s
a far cry from the ostrich that puts its head in the sand, hoping that the
storm will pass only to find that by the time it rears its head the wound has
festered and its lost strategic advantage.

That leaves Qatar with the issue of the integrity of its
bid, which may be in terms of public diplomacy the toughest nut to crack. On
the principle of where there is smoke, there is fire, Qatar is in a bind.
Nonetheless, some greater degree of transparency, including regarding
relationships with Mohammed bin Hammam, the disgraced FIFA executive committee
member and head of the Asian Football Confederation AFC at the time of the
Qatari bid, would have been helpful.

The integrity issue, Qatar’s weak point, will without doubt be exploited by its
detractors, first and foremost in the Gulf. For critics of Qatar, there are two
questions. One is, who do they want to get in bed with? Qatar’s detractors, the
United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia hardly have stellar human and labour
rights records. If anything, their records are worse than that of Qatar, which
admittedly does not glow.

It is doubtful that the World Cup is at the core of the Gulf
crisis, despite a declaration by Dubai’s top security official, Lt. General
Khalfan, that the crisis would be resolved if Qatar surrendered its hosting
rights. Nonetheless, it is an important enough symbol and vehicle for
reputational capital for Qatar’s detractors, and particularly the UAE, to
target.

That is evident from the emails of the UAE ambassador in
Washington, Youssef al-Otaiba, whose account was either hacked or leaked by an
insider. Al-Otaiba had devised a complex financial manoeuvre to undermine Qatar’s
currency and deprive the Gulf state of its hosting rights. While Qatar has
sought to counter the UAE efforts, its noticeable that it has not adopted a
similar tactic by, for example, targeting the 2020 World Expo in Dubai.

The second question critics have to ask themselves is how
best to leverage the World Cup, irrespective of whether the Qatari bid was
compromised or not. On the assumption that it may have been compromised, the
question is less how to exact retribution for a wrong doing that was common
practice in global football governance. Leveraging should focus on how to
achieve a fundamental reform of global sports governance that has yet to emerge
six years into a crisis that was in part sparked by the Qatar World Cup. This
goes to the heart of the fact that untouched in the governance crisis is the
corrupting, ungoverned, and incestuous relationship between sports and
politics.

The future of the Qatar World Cup and the Gulf crisis speaks
to the pervasiveness of politics in sports. The World Cup is political by
definition. Retaining Qatar’s hosting rights or depriving the Gulf state of the
right to host the tournament is ultimately a choice with political
consequences. As long as the crisis continues, retaining rights is a testimony
to Qatar’s resilience, deprival would be a victory for its detractors. It is
with good reason that the UAE no doubt will continue its covert campaign to
undermine Qatar’s hosting rights.

The real yardstick in the debate about the Qatari World Cup
should be how the sport and the integrity of the sport benefit most. And even
than, politics is never far from what the outcome of that debate is. Obviously,
instinctively, the optics of no retribution raises the question of how that
benefits integrity.

Yet, the potential legacy of social and economic change that
is already evident with the Qatar World Cup is more important than the
feel-good effect of having done the right thing with retribution or the notion
of setting an example. Add to that the fact that in current circumstances, a
withdrawal of hosting rights would likely be interpreted as a victory of one
side over the other, further divide the Arab and Muslim world, and enhance a
sense among many Muslims of being on the defensive and under attack.

To be clear, the rot in sports governance goes far beyond
financial and performance corruption. That is evident in the way that the Gulf
crisis, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
increasingly permeate soccer with a mounting number of decisions that upend the
notion of a separation of sports and politics. They also put an end to the
principle of judging professionals on their merits rather than nationality and
make a mockery of the ideal of soccer as a bridge builder rather than a
divider.

In a bizarre and contradictory sequence of events, FIFA
president Gianni Infantino in June rejected involving the group in the Gulf
crisis by saying that “the essential role of FIFA, as I understand it, is to
deal with football and not to interfere in geopolitics."

Yet, on the same day that he made his statement, Mr.
Infantino waded into the Gulf crisis by removing a Qatari referee from a 2018
World Cup qualifier at the request of the UAE. FIFA, beyond declaring that the
decision was taken “in view of the current geopolitical situation,” appeared to
be saying by implication that a Qatari by definition of his nationality could
not be an honest arbiter of a soccer match involving one of his country’s
detractors. In FIFA’s decision, politics trumped professionalism, no pun
intended.

A demand this month by the Egyptian Football Federation
(EFA) to disbar a Qatari from refereeing Egyptian and Saudi matches during next
year’s World Cup in Russia puts FIFA in a position in which it will have to
decide to either opt for professionalism over politics or also disbar from
refereeing politically sensitive matches game officials from Qatar’s
distractors– Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – who have likewise been appointed
for the tournament.

FIFA’s tying itself up in knots in response to the Gulf
crisis like the politics underlying corruption charges in New York and Zurich
cries out for putting the inextricable relationship between sports and politics
on the table and developing ways to govern a relationship that is a fact of
life. It is a relationship that sports executives, politicians and government
officials deny even though it is public, recognizable and undeniable.

If the Qatar World Cup because of the controversy that
surrounds it and because of its World Cup having become a geopolitical football
leads ultimately to an honest and open debate about the relationship of
politics and sports, Qatar, unwittingly rather than wittingly, would have made
a fundamental contribution to a healthier governance of sports in general and
soccer in particular.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile